


a bad day to be an arkham guard

by nsfwena (enamuko)



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 22:30:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17374433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enamuko/pseuds/nsfwena
Summary: A simple plumbing issue causes a world of trouble for Arkham when someone gets the bright idea to make Scarecrow and Riddler cell mates. One particular night guard can't seem to let it go. Edward and Jonathan, on the other hand, are having a pretty good time.





	1. a routine disaster

**Author's Note:**

> If you notice a sudden change in writing style, that's because most of this was written a few years ago, and the rest only recently. I barely edited this, other than a cursory read-over for grammar and spelling errors (which was done while I was pretty tired so it probably wasn't super comprehensive).
> 
> This was originally meant to be a one-shot but it got out of hand. So I broke it down into 3 chapters and a little epilogue. I'll be posting them all at once.

Arkham Asylum liked to think of itself as an impregnable fortress (not true in the slightest), but even an impregnable fortress was subject to the little misfortunes of life. Even Arkham Asylum needed proper plumbing, for example. And even the most well-maintained plumbing (which Arkham's most certainly was  _not_ , especially considering the fact that several major pipes ran through the domain of a twelve-foot monster man that no one bothered to keep in check beyond a locked security door and tossing a meal down to him every so often) sometimes became overtaxed. And when plumbing became overtaxed it broke down and caused leaks. Which were manageable in small numbers. Nothing in Arkham ever happened by halves, though; when things went wrong, things went  _terribly_ wrong. Which led to an entire cell block being filled with approximately six inches of putrid water probably rife with enough toxins to put the deadly gas weapons of any of the asylum's super villain patients to shame.

Arkham Asylum also liked to think of itself as possessing an incredibly intelligent staff.  _The best in the country_ , they always claimed, and waved their hands when people questioned their abysmal turnover rate. Jonathan Crane had a hard time believing there was a single person on their staff who could rub two brain cells together and come up with even the slightest spark of an idea. Their psychiatric work was bland, uninspired, derivative; their treatment methodologies more so. Arkham made a better prison than asylum— or "psychiatric care facility", as the term was nowadays, although the name Arkham Asylum was so rooted in the public conscious of Gotham that it would stay forever— and even then, it made a piss poor one.

When the flooding happened, Crane was one of sixty-two inmates who suddenly had no cell to call their own. Arkham, being Arkham, never had a cell to spare; there were just too many people who needed to be locked up and not enough space for all of them. He was sure if there weren't at least a dozen regulations against it and a hundred chances for an inmate to escape during the repair process, they would have just been left in the flooded cells. And so, a cellmate program had been instituted. Inmates were placed with whoever they were least likely to kill— not that the staff really cared if a few inmates offed each other, but Quincy Sharp couldn't afford any bad publicity while he was preparing for his mayoral campaign.

Whoever had overseen room assignments for the displaced inmates was either new or not very bright (Jonathan would assume both), because when he was escorted to his new cell, Edward Nygma grinned and called him roommate.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't like their "working relationship" was common knowledge. Jonathan would have gone so far as to say  _no one_ knew. There were hints, of course, the witty banter and the lingering looks and the fact that they worked together perhaps a bit more often than two people with such different MOs reasonably  _should_ , but flirtation really meant nothing to anyone in their circles. Ivy and Riddler flirted too, and they obviously weren't comparing who looked better without their greenery. Still, he was pretty sure there had to be a rule  _somewhere_ against putting costumed super villains with a history of working together in the same cell.

Edward greeted him with all of his usual capriciousness, swinging between a shit-eating grin with accompanying 'hello, Johnny's and pointedly ignoring him which was perhaps only fair because he  _had_ been going out of his way to avoid the younger man during his limited recreational time. Still, he wasn't about to feed into the Riddler's insatiable ego and appetite for attention. The guard was content enough to shove him inside, undo his cuffs, and lock him in with his new roommate, not really caring one way or another how they would react to each other in those crucial first few minutes. He was sure that at least one inmate would end up in the medical facility that night over some perceived slight or another, especially considering that his cell block was not exactly home to the most stable characters— if anyone in Arkham could really be called  _stable_ . Neither he nor Edward would be one of them.

They had been roommates often enough for both to know that they could live with each other without killing each other. Mostly.

Jonathan went about his business, putting away his scant few belongings. The cells were only equipped to hold one person comfortably, but somehow Edward had either charmed or annoyed the mighty masters of Arkham into giving him an end-cell, which at least had enough room for a rough cot in addition to its normal fixtures. A rough cot that was now his, at least until Arkham got cell block D drained, which might take a week or might take months depending on how long the contractors bickered about who could offer the lowest price.

"Together again. You just can't stay away, can you?" The obvious taunt was coupled with an insufferable laugh and sure, Jonathan had a dozen witty comebacks he could throw out, but it was so much more satisfying to stay quiet while he meticulously spread out his threadbare blanket. It infuriated Edward for sure, but it also reminded him that this game they played was a two-way street. Jonathan could not be manipulated into giving into his cravings the way he did with his psychiatrists or the police or a dozen other outlets for his attention whoring.

He was too smart for that, and they had to live together now.

 

* * *

 

Jonathan had a  _list_ of things he hated about Arkham, and it grew every day. Every single damn day he had been there, and he had been there quite a number of days. Fairly high on that list was how cold and damp the asylum got some nights. Who wanted to spend tax payer's money on heating for a bunch of low life criminals when they could line their own pockets instead?

He shivered under his worn blanket and tossed in the uncomfortable cot once more before deciding he simply couldn't sleep like that. Most nights that would have meant he wasn't sleeping at all, and it was true that he'd had many sleepless nights in Arkham Asylum. That night, though, he had—  _options_ .

Edward wasn't asleep either, not that the fact surprised him. He was laying in bed and staring at the ceiling, muttering to himself. Typical Edward behaviour in the dead of night. For a man like him there was no one else worth talking to except for himself.

(And maybe  _him_ , if he was being honest, because he knew how much Edward loved their conversations— but he wasn't interested in playing ball at the moment. Not on Edward's terms.)

When Jonathan climbed out of bed and crossed the two-step threshold to the side of Edward's, he stopped muttering to himself and looked up at him with a completely insufferable smile.

"Evening, Dr. Crane." It was part affection and part mockery and that was really what all of this was, wasn't it?

"I'm  _cold_ ." That wasn't supposed to sound that whiny and he was sure the Riddler would hold it over his head some time in the future, but he couldn't help but feel vindicated by the way Edward perked at that statement as the implications ran through his mind. Jonathan shuffled another half-step closer to the bed, thighs pressed against the cold frame. He wasn't really waiting for permission so much as for Edward to get his shit together. He didn't  _ask permission_ to climb into Edward's bed, but it was really so much easier when Edward was complacent and put his bony limbs in places that wouldn't jab him in sensitive spots.

Edward looked insufferable with that grin on his face, but he parted his knees obligingly, tossing his rough blanket to the side. He made some kind of snarky comment, but Jonathan had completely tuned him out with ease of practice. He shuffled himself onto the bed, careful not to knee Edward in the groin; as amusing as he was sure it would be, it would no doubt get him kicked out of his bed, quite possibly in the literal sense.

He was rewarded immediately. Edward radiated heat like a furnace, whereas even the slightest hint of clamminess had Jonathan's extremities freezing up like a cadaver. He nestled his head into Edward's neck, one hand going to cup the other side, which was immediately responded to with a full-bodied shiver.

"Was that really necessary?" Edward asked, trying to squirm away slightly from the feeling of ice-cold fingers on his neck. Jonathan pretended to be too tired to listen.

Idly, he was aware of the camera in the upper corner of the cell. Privacy was virtually unknown in the secure wings of Arkham Asylum. Too many escape attempts with too high a body count had removed its status as a right and changed it into a privilege that none of them had yet been able to earn. Idly, he was also aware of how little he cared. He even shot a dark glare in the general direction of the camera, though he was sure it wouldn't be quite visible in the low-light conditions.

Edward seemed amused and just as nonchalant about the security camera. He threw the scratchy blanket back over them, even going so far as to tuck it in a little around Jonathan— though it was hard to tell whether it was from tenderness or condescension. Either way he was much warmer than he was before, and his goal was therefore reached.

(Just as idly, he was curious as to whether the guards would go as far as to mention this fact to the psychiatrists in charge of their cases. If they did, it would amuse him terribly; it would be just more proof that their lives were as were as pathetic as Jonathan had always been convinced they were. Even more amusing was the idea that those psychiatrists would try and bring up their "latent homosexuality" in relation to their cases, as if some kind of non-existent closet could explain why they did what they did. It seemed like the sort of absurd notion that the idiots Arkham employed would get into their heads. Such was the narcissism of modern medicine, he supposed.)

"Comfortable?" Edward murmured. Jonathan didn't reply, but he did start lightly scratching at Edward's neck close to where the hair started. All complaints about his cold hands were forgotten— he could have sworn Edward started practically  _purring_ .

 

* * *

 

It was only Dwayne Cabrera's fourth day as a security guard at Arkham and things were already off to a terrible start. True, the man had been a security guard at Blackgate for five years and at various other prison facilities for another ten, but there was nothing quite like Arkham to test someone's dedication to their field. They had by far the highest turnover rate of any correctional facility in the state, if not the country, and only half of those were due to the inevitable deaths that came with a breakout attempt. People just couldn't  _handle_ being around criminals like Joker, Two-Face, and the Riddler for very long without it messing them up.

The flooding was a terrible omen. Not that he believed in omens. He just thought it didn't bode well that he had been on the job for less than a week and on short notice the staff had needed to relocate more than fifty of their most dangerous inmates.  _Scarecrow_ had been on that list, of all people, and whoever had overseen relocating him deserved not only to get fired but to get tarred and feathered. Really, whose bright idea could it be to put the Scarecrow and the  _Riddler_ in the same cell? Didn't anyone read the news anymore? They were long time collaborators and partners who had on more than one occasion tried to collectively murder most of the population of Gotham. He had tried to keep a close eye on them whenever he was on shift, sure that something bad was going to happen.

"Evening, Lisa," he grunted to his shift mate. They hadn't known each other long enough to be friends but they had already developed a mutual sense of respect. He had more general experience, but even though she had been a security guard for ten years less than him, she had spent the entirety of her career as a guard in Arkham. They both had something to bring to the table and neither of them were bothered by working the night shift, which was a sure improvement from the whiners Dwayne was  _used_ to working with. "Anything on the monitors?"

Lisa reclined somewhat in her chair, sipping at her watered-down break room coffee. Almost the entire far side of the wall was covered in monitors; it was necessary considering how many places their eyes had to be at once. Luckily Arkham had state-of-the-art monitoring programs that threw up a figurative red flag if something like a potential breakout was happening. Still, there were so many things that the program didn't pick up on that it was just safest to have a skeleton guard on hand.

"Everything's quiet," she replied, spinning a half-circle in her chair. Dwayne took his own seat opposite hers and immediately turned to monitor seventeen, the monitor marked E. Nygma/J. Crane in one corner.

Everything  _seemed_ to be just as quiet as Lisa assured him it was. The Riddler and Scarecrow were both lying in their respective beds, although neither of them were asleep. Riddler seemed to be talking to himself and Scarecrow was tossing and turning. He did a quick scan of the other monitors and things were just as quiet for everyone else. It surprised him, really; the relocation of prisoners had been so sudden that he'd been sure  _someone_ would end up getting stabbed, and yet it hadn't happened yet. Maybe if he was lucky they would save all the shenanigans for the next shift.

Movement on monitor seventeen drew his attention. Scarecrow had gotten out of bed and was standing next to Riddler's. They didn't seem to be having much of a conversation, but he tensed up anyway, scrambling for the headset.

"What's got you all worked up?" Lisa asked, craning her head back to look at him without turning her chair. He affixed the headset to his head without  _too_ much fumbling and tried to listen carefully, but it didn't seem like the two inmates were interested in talking. For a moment it seemed like Riddler was going to get out of bed, too; he shifted positions and threw the blanket off himself.

Dwayne nearly choked on his tongue. Lisa, who had just been turning back to her own monitor bank, swivelled her chair around to look at him with curiosity. She repeated her earlier, unanswered question; for a moment he wasn't sure what to say.

"Uh— what's our policy on... cuddling?"

He turned to look at Lisa, whose eyes were narrowed in suspicion. She wheeled her chair over to his side of the room to peer around his shoulder at the monitor, then rolled her eyes. The sight of Scarecrow lying on top of Riddler with his face nuzzled into the neck of the Prince of Puzzles didn't seem to faze her in the slightest.

"I don't know, what was Blackgate's policy?" she asked with a small snort as she went back to her coffee. Dwayne couldn't help but colour a little.

"I'm serious. Shouldn't we... I don't know, tell someone about this kind of stuff?" he asked. Whereas his eyes had been practically glued to the monitor since prisoner transfer, now he was trying his best to look  _anywhere else_ . It didn't help that in the headset he was still wearing, for whatever reason, he could hear what sounded like Scarecrow humming and the Riddler...  _purring_ , as ridiculous as that sounded.

Lisa sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Dwayne flushed; part of it was from frustration, but he also felt shame about the fact that she seemed to be exasperated with him. He was still figuring out how things worked in Arkham and he had no desire to exasperate the people with more experience.

"Mr. Cabrera, you're new here. I understand. It takes time to adjust to dealing with people like Nygma and Crane instead of the usual scum and dirt bags," she said in a tone of collected patience. "The doctors might like to think they're helping these guys, but the reality is that they're here because someone needs to keep them  _subdued_ . Anything that keeps them docile and quiet helps us." She craned her head to see the monitor behind him. "They look pretty docile right about now."

Dwayne glanced back at the monitor. It was true that the pair looked rather content. The Riddler seemed to be asleep and Scarecrow was apparently playing with his hair, looking rather drowsy himself. The only sound that was still carrying through the headphones was the light sound of breathing and the occasional nasal whistle on Riddler's part.

"If you're really that hung up on it," Lisa continued with a shrug, looking back to her own section of monitors and her now lukewarm coffee. "Just put it in your nightly report. The bigwigs will see it eventually and they can figure out what to do about it."

Dwayne nodded, slipping off the headphones and setting them to the side. Maybe she was right. They were quiet and that gave him a lot less to worry about; now that they were asleep (or at least well on their way to being asleep), he could focus on other inmates without feeling like something terrible was going to spring up at any moment.

"If you say so," he said, wheeling his chair around and moving to a different bank of monitors.

"Besides, having you sitting there and staring at two of the inmates cuddling would look pretty creepy out of context."

“...shut up."

 

* * *

 

Two mornings later, while Jonathan and Edward were getting ready for their breakfast escort, an armed guard approached their cell and informed Jonathan Crane that he was being transferred.

It was a smart choice; if an inmate started to show a connection to their cell mate, there was always a chance they might start thinking of themselves as  _human_ , and the masters of Arkham just couldn't abide by that.

Jonathan allowed himself to be cuffed and escorted away carrying his few belongings without any sort of a fuss. Edward, though he was obviously somewhat disgruntled by the loss of his cell mate, did not express any extraordinary displeasure. That would have been giving the people in charge what they wanted, and  _he_ just couldn't abide by that. Besides, while the staff of Arkham liked to think  _they_ were in charge, everyone knew that the inmates ran the asylum. They both had their ways of getting what they wanted.

It wasn't a week before Jonathan was being escorted back to the Riddler's cell. It was much longer than he had expected the situation to last, to the credit of the Arkham staff. But he wasn't surprised to see him in the slightest. In fact, he reacted as if Jonathan was merely being escorted back from therapy or one of the other half-dozen mundane routine things that separated them on a regular basis.

Gossip in Arkham was a trickle-down system, and the so-called Rogues— because of street cred if nothing else— were the best-informed inmates in the place. Edward, though not well liked by the other patients as a rule, fancied himself the  _best_ -informed and...  _rewarded_ those who were kind enough to share with him. And so, it hadn't taken long for him to hear about the... rather  _unfortunate_ fates of the other inmates they had attempted to put the Scarecrow with.

Four in one week was quite impressive, especially when the other rogue didn't have his fear toxin or anything even remotely resembling a sharp object.

Four nights with new roommates, each of them babbling to themselves the next morning or else catatonic, followed by three nights in solitary during which Jonathan had proven himself to be a danger both to himself and to the people watching him. One of the guards watching his feed had suffered a nervous breakdown, and that was the point where they started to catch on.

"I hear they have new cells down in solitary," Edward commented by way of making conversation as Jonathan dropped his things on his cot, which they had never bothered to remove— probably because they had forgotten about it, just as much as the cellmates had.

"They're as abysmal as ever," he replied, adjusting his glasses. Just like that, things were restored— back to the way they  _should_ be, because three days of being cellmates had taught them that despite how much they could grate on each other's nerves at times, sharing a cell was preferable to being alone (or worse, in the company of one of the asylum's many blathering idiots).

Edward gave the guard a smug grin as if to say  _too bad, we win_ .

 

* * *

 

Once their status as cellmates had circulated itself through Arkham as gossip, people had started a betting pool on how long it would take the two of them to kill each other, and who would end up dead. Virtually everyone had picked Jonathan as the killer, with lengths of time varying between a week and going as high as a month.

The Joker was the one who ended up collecting the pot, because he had been the only one to guess that someone  _else_ would end up dead first.

Lunch was so routine that even Arkham's staff couldn't screw it up, try as they might. It was generally accepted that the Rogues sat in relative proximity— the same six or seven tables as far away from the main entrance as the guards would reasonably tolerate— and the rest of the inmates gave them a wide berth, even if that meant squeezing themselves into tables meant to hold half as many people just to give their tables a 'buffer zone'. Though things like food fights and the occasional  _fist_ fight broke out during lunch, it was serene for the most part. Especially when their medications, not quite completely hidden in their food, started to kick in.

Though there was no seating plan as such, for the most part the same people sat together with the only variation depending on who was simply  _not there_ at the time. After all, there was always at least a handful of them that were either in solitary confinement or who had escaped the asylum. It was one of the few times besides rec hour privileges (which not all inmates had) that the men and women could socialize, though they invariably stayed separate outside of the Rogues and it wasn't uncommon to see that rule rescinded because of safety concerns.

Jonathan sat poking at his lumpy mashed potatoes and sneering at nothing in particular— business as usual for the lunch room. Harley was on his right, chattering about something to both him and Ivy who was sitting on the opposite side— there were equal chances of it being something insightful or something totally inane, but since he was most definitely not listening he could hardly be called on to make a judgment in that regard. Harvey was sitting opposite the three of them, trying to separate his food into equal portions. Normally their table would be more heavily populated, but at the moment Jarvis was still at large and the Joker was in solitary for putting a pen through the eye of an orderly. Jarvis he missed, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to care about Joker's absence; in fact, it was making for a rather pleasant lunch hour in comparison to most.

He lifted his eyes from prodding at his food to search out Edward in the line still trundling along to get to the food counter. His therapy session had run long, forcing him to show up later than most everyone else. Normally that would annoy Jonathan, since lunch time was the only time he would regularly get to see Edward— much as the younger man annoyed him most times, their conversations were inevitably more intellectually stimulating than any interactions he had with the asylum staff. With the two of them sharing a cell, however, that concern was beyond him. He'd had more than enough of his fill of conversation with Edward, and was in fact proud of the fact that he'd tolerated him as long as he had. They'd been roommates for much longer periods of time than this, but they always had things like their work and such to distract them.

Jonathan was quick to turn his attention back to his food when Edward finally reached the end of the line, had his tray filled, and started towards the table. If he were caught staring he was sure he would never hear the end of it; Edward tended to have the relative emotional maturity of a high schooler, despite or perhaps because of his genius level intellect. Things had settled into such a clear routine between the two of them that Jonathan was sure he could predict exactly how most of their interactions would inevitably go; in this case Edward would saunter over, immediately try to capture the attention of everyone at the table (but Jonathan in particular), no doubt get irritated when no one gave it to him, and then settle in to the rest of their usual lunch routine.

Or that was how things would have gone without outside interference.

His first indication that something was wrong was the sounds of a scuffle. Outside of the occasional breakdown of order, the Arkham lunch room was a fairly calm place, and altercations were rare. Nobody wanted to get sent back to their cells on an empty stomach because of a tussle and the guards were quick to tamp down any kind of fight before they all had their medication in them. He stopped staring at his increasingly massacred pile of potatoes to look for the source of the disturbance, along with the rest of the table; even Harley stopped chatting and tried to peer around him to see what was going on.

When Jonathan saw a rather brutish looking man looming over Edward with the front of his standard-issue jumpsuit covered in the milk that was previously in Edward's plastic cup, he felt his stomach sink a little.

The rest of the room hadn't quite hushed as much as their table, perhaps because not all of them had noticed, and so he couldn't hear what was being said. He could  _see_ that Edward looked irritated and slightly red in the face, and was clearly raising his voice, which certainly didn't bode well. Edward's hair trigger temper and superiority complex were a terrible mixture when it came to dealing with people stronger than he was.

The bigger inmate put his hand out to shove Edward, who stumbled and dropped the rest of his lunch. The flush of anger that had been creeping over his face went full-blown tomato red, and he was yelling loud enough that Jonathan could almost make out what he was saying now—combined with the hush that was starting to fall over the lunch room.

(What were the  _guards_ doing?)

He didn’t even realize he had gotten out of his seat until Harley grabbed his sleeve.

“Jon, maybe I should—”

“I’ll take care of it, Harleen.” After all, Edward wasn’t _her_ problem—she had her own messes to worry about.

This one was all his.

He casually slipped his plastic spork into his sleeve—of course they weren’t allowed  _real_ utensils—and stared defiantly at one of the guards, just  _daring_ him to say anything. But his attention was all on the brewing fight, making no move to intervene at all. He almost looked  _pleased_ by the situation!

Edward was making some comment about being able to see himself in the inmate’s shiny bald head, and Jonathan could see the stranger’s fist clenching, veins popping, ready to pull back and rearrange Edward’s face—

Jonathan hooked an arm around the inmate’s neck from behind. He didn’t see it coming; obviously he didn’t expect anyone to come to Edward’s rescue. He put uncomfortable pressure on his carotid arteries, the exact sort of pressure he would put on someone’s neck to put them in a choke hold, but he didn’t try to hold; even given the element of surprise, he doubted he would be able to hold him long enough to knock him unconscious. No doubt he would either throw him off or the guards would intervene before he could manage that. Thankfully, it freed up one of his hands…

The spork appeared in his hand and, while the inmate was still struggling and reeling from being grabbed, he stabbed it into his eyeball.

For a moment, everything was silent—all the other inmates, including Edward and the one with a spork in his eye, had fallen totally quiet.

Then the screaming started, and everything went to shit.


	2. a slap on the wrist and fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout from Jonathan's actions in the cafeteria turns out to be not so bad, except maybe for Jonathan's patience. Meanwhile, Dwayne the security guard is having a bad night. Or maybe a good one?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish when I set out to write PWP it didn't take like, 7.5k of setup beforehand.

_“Well, I had to do_ something _. The guards evidently weren’t going to.”_

A week in solitary. Originally meant to be a month, but commuted to a week after the first handful of ‘extended’ sessions with his doctor.

“ _And you don’t believe your actions were excessive?”_

“ _Of course not. I could see the violence brewing, and the inmate was a known violent offender. Edward isn’t exactly known for deescalating situations…”_

“ _You’ve shown little regard for other inmates in the past. Can you elaborate on why you felt the need to get involved this time?”_

“ _Because if I don’t look out for Edward, no one will—least of all himself.”_

They’d learned their lessons after the last time, evidently, because this time around there was no attempt to move him to a new cell. If the effects of his being cellmates with Edward were bad, the effects of separating them were worse.

“ _I see. So, you and Mr. Nygma are… friends?”_

“ _That oversimplifies things. He and I… are a good match, intellectually, despite his overinflated ego. Sometimes it’s just nice to spend time with someone who actually understands what you’re talking about.”_

Edward kept himself composed while the guard allowed Jonathan back into the cell, but as soon as he was gone, he took on the demeanour of a dog being subjected to 4 th of July fireworks.

“What the Hell were you thinking?!”

“It’s nice to see you too.”

Edward started turning red in the face at the blatant dismissal of his question. Jonathan didn’t even really  _look_ at him, except fleetingly, and mostly because there wasn’t much else to look at in the 6 by 9-foot space they called home.

“The guards could have shot you!” Edward sputtered, and Jonathan resisted the urge to wipe spittle from his face; he had to _live_ with the man, and he could only handle so much intolerable griping. “Or one of those other brainless oafs could have taken a swing at you, or, or—or anything!”

Edward was even more red in the face now, but far more interesting were the tears prickling at the edges of his eyes. He always wore his heart on his sleeve, for anyone smart enough to know what to look for, though he was loathe to admit it—such a thing was obviously beneath someone of his intellect, or so he would claim.

“Fairly _common_ dangers that come with living in a high-security prison for the ‘criminally insane’, all in all,” Jon deflected with a casual shrug of his shoulders.

“Which is exactly why I would think you’d know better than to exacerbate the situation!”

“You would think, but unfortunately life sometimes gets in the way of raw logic.” Life and poor choices in friends.

“Just— _why_? Tell me why, Jon.”

That was what it always boiled down to—Edward’s need to  _know_ . He just couldn’t stand the thought of  _not_ knowing something. It was what made him so easy to manipulate… but Jonathan wasn’t looking to manipulate him.

“ _Because if I don’t look out for Edward, no one else will—least of all himself.”_

“Because I’m afraid I’ve gotten used to having a roommate—and having my space heater in the infirmary after having his face beaten in would have done neither of us any good.”

Edward rolled his eyes and muttered something about being made fun of, but out of the corner of his eye, Jonathan saw him rubbing surreptitiously at his eyes with the sleeve of his jumpsuit.

 

* * *

 

“Jonathan.”

He made a noise, somewhere between a groan and a grumble. Was he even awake? It was impossible to tell.

“Jonathan,” Edward repeated into the darkness. The lump on the cot stirred, but there were no more signs and no more noises of his waking up. “ _Jonathan._ ”

Maybe it was the slight whine he added to his voice, maybe it was just the constant repetition. But in the vaguely menacing glow of the low red lights the guards did their rounds by, Jonathan stirred and sat up.

“ _What_ do you _want_?” Jonathan hissed into the darkness. To anyone else, it might have been terrifying—that raspy voice, coming from red-tinted darkness, was practically the stuff of nightmares.

Edward wasn’t afraid of Jonathan, though. Not unless he  _wanted_ to be.

“…aren’t you cold?”

He wanted to smack himself for that. He’d had this whole  _speech_ planned out, but that was the only thing he could think to say!

Jonathan turned to look at him, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“…what?”

“Cold! Aren’t you cold in that stupid cot of yours?” He rolled his eyes even though Jonathan couldn’t see him in the darkness. “You’ve only been complaining about it every night since you got here…”

He could  _feel_ Jonathan’s eyes on him in the darkness, and he was already preparing a retort for whatever nasty comment Jon could come up with when he heard the scrape of the metal legs of the cot on the cell’s cement floor.

Jonathan standing over him in the eerie red light was a truly terrifying image. But he simply sighed and rubbed his eyes again.

“Well?”

“…well what?”

“Are you going to make room for me or not?”

Edward practically smacked himself, and even though it was too dark to  _really_ see the expression on Jonathan’s face, he could just imagine the smug quirk of his lips that wasn’t quite a smile at his momentary lapse in brain function.

Edward pushed back the thin sheets that they called blankets. It felt almost… routine.

(Jonathan  _really_ hated being cold, after all.)

In the darkness, trying not to knee each other in anything important, it took longer than it probably should have. But eventually Jonathan got settled on top of him, all his sharp angles tucked where they’d do the least harm.

At first, Edward had enjoyed the way Jonathan cuddled up to him only because of the potential to be smug—sleeping with Jonathan lying on top of him was like sleeping with an ice cube on his chest, but the fact that he was so  _whiny_ about the clamminess of Arkham at night when he was always going on about Edward whining too much was just too good to pass up.

As time passed, though—and Arkham seemed content to leave them being roommates, since the repair project on Jonathan’s wing was pretty much stalled thanks to ‘lack of funding’—as time passed, he started to enjoy it, in a way. It wasn’t like this was the first time he and Jonathan had shared a bed (obviously), but it  _was_ the first time they had been forced into such…  _close quarters_ . An Arkham bed was about as small a bed as you could get, and sharing it with someone might have been the worst sleeping situation he could have imagined, but the reality of it wasn’t so bad. He and Jonathan were both skinny guys, and Jonathan was pretty good at not jabbing him with his glass-cutting knees and elbows most of the time…

(It was certainly more affection than Jonathan had ever shown him before—at least in the conventional sense.)

Even though it had been  _his_ idea for Jonathan to join him, Jonathan sighed and sunk in against him. As he expected, he felt like a human ice cube… but the warmth of his breath on his neck was what  _really_ sent a shiver up his spine.

Edward started rubbing Jonathan’s back, almost like he was trying to warm him up. It elicited another sigh from him, sending another chill up his spine—and this time  _Edward_ sighed in turn.

Jonathan rose off him just enough to look him in the eye, and even in the barely-there red light, Edward could see the Look on his face. There was a smugness there, which made him flush immediately, but there was also a glimmer in his eye like an amused cat, and a subtle but brilliant grin.

“I wasn’t gone that long, you know.”

“…you could have been gone a lot longer.” Like forever.

Jonathan smiled, leaned in, and kissed him.

 

* * *

 

Dwayne muttered a greeting to Lisa as he sat down at his monitor bank, coffee in hand. Cutbacks, turnover, and  _workplace hazards_ meant they were short staffed, and they were working longer and longer shifts to cover the gap. This was his third double shift this week, covering one of the evening walkabouts, and he was about stretched to his limit. If there wasn’t a shortage of jobs in Gotham…

Dwayne set his coffee down on his desk and massaged his temples. At least this was the easy part of the job; he just had to be careful he didn’t fall asleep on the job. Just watch the screens, keep an eye out for those little red dots…

His eyes drifted automatically towards the ‘Riddlecrow’ cell, as the other guards had taken to calling it. Just the thought still made him nervous, left him on edge, but it seemed like he was the only one; the higher ups hadn’t listened to his pleas to have the two separated, and everyone else treated it like some kind of TV show to tune into every day, especially since the spork incident.

Even though he disapproved, harshly, he’d gotten…  _used to_ the situation. Lisa had teased him about his so-called fixation at first, telling him he was being immature, and maybe that was a part of it, but he figured that the two of them weren’t hurting anyone anymore than they usually would be. The docs had said that Scarecrow was, according to the memo, ‘no more of a danger to himself or others than was already accounted for, and was acting in the defence of another, owing to the inactivity of the guards in the lunchroom’.

(Boy, he’d cringed when he saw that. The docs and the rest of the folks responsible for running Arkham didn’t always get along, but usually it was a little more well hidden than that. They had an image to maintain, after all.)

Actually, if anything, things seemed to be calmer than ever, at least with the two of them. Outside of the ‘spork incident’, they hadn’t had a single report about either of them. Of course, they were just two inmates of many, and Arkham was still Arkham, but the two of them… well, they were right up there with the Joker in terms of damage and death count. As long as they kept each other docile…

As usual, Scarecrow had crawled right on top of Riddler and settled in. Dwayne didn’t blame him; Arkham was freezing, even in the middle of summer. Even the higher ups kept space heaters in their office, which was, he supposed, the price you paid for having your asylum in a bunch of historic stone buildings instead of something built after centralized heating was invented.

He was about to turn away and do a quick sweep of the other monitors when motion caught his eye. Maybe Lisa was right—maybe he was a little obsessed. It wasn’t like moving around in your sleep was against the law…

(Although, considering the body count they both had under their belts, he felt like he was pretty justified in his paranoia.)

They were talking, and Scarecrow had pushed himself up so he could look Riddler in the face instead of talking into his neck where he usually situated himself. The two of them talking in the dead of night always made him nervous. He supposed they had to do  _something_ to fend off the boredom, but… he couldn’t help but feel like they were plotting in the darkness.

“Back to that, huh?” Lisa teased when he reached for his headset. He ignored her teasing as he slipped it on, adjusting the volume. It was pretty impressive they even _had_ audio in the cells—couldn’t afford heating, but hundreds of high-tech spy cameras? Sure.

…he immediately regretted the decision.

He had to resist the urge to immediately turn away and contemplate the rest of the monitors while whistling nonchalantly. That would have been…  _suspicious._ But he tried to focus on any part of the screen but the part he should have actually been looking at.

The angle wasn’t perfect by any means—not that he  _wanted_ it to be—but it was hard to mistake what was happening. They were obviously…  _kissing_ .

He guessed he should have expected something like that, based on the cuddling and what not. And it wasn’t like even Scarecrow was the kind of guy to stab someone in the eye with a blunt utensil without having a good reason—even if those reasons were crazier than a sprayed cockroach, most of the time. It was just—hard to think of them as people. They were larger than life, and—

“ _Don’t go changing the subject on me!”_

The sudden sound of Riddler’s voice made him jump; he’d almost forgotten he was wearing the headset.

“ _Who’s changing the subject?”_ Scarecrow was leaning over Riddler again, blocking his view—not that he _wanted_ to see anything!

“ _You can’t distract me like that!”_

“ _I beg to differ.”_

“ _It’s not going to—”_

Scarecrow cut him off by kissing him again—at least, that’s what he was assumed. Riddler almost looked like he was trying to push him off, until his hand came around to bury itself in Scarecrow’s hair.

…why was he still watching this?! It wasn’t like it would be _hard_ to stop watching—it was literally the default option. But for whatever reason, he just couldn’t tear his eyes away…

 

* * *

 

“You need to  _stop that_ .”

Jonathan chuckled. Even in the darkness, even with the deep red glow from just outside their cell door, he could tell Edward was flushed a deep red. He could tell from the way his face was pinched, from the way his eyes wandered so he wouldn’t have to look directly at him…

“You worry too much.”

“ _I_ worry too much?!” Edward swivelled his head back to glare at him. The fingers in his hair were just on the edge of painful. Maybe he was letting him get away with a little too much… after all, Edward often needed a firm hand on the reins… “I’m not the one jumping in with plastic utensils to stop a fistfight that isn’t even happening yet!”

“Edward…” Jonathan sighed. He guessed he really should have expected something like this… their lives were unaccountably dangerous, every day, but without the adrenaline rush of their schemes (and the planning to occupy his mind), Edward’s overactive imagination was running away with him. Combined with his abandonment issues… “You know what I’m going to say, right?”

Edward was silent, and once again wouldn’t look him in the eye. So the answer was obviously yes.

“…I could have handled myself.”

“Mm, is that so?”

“I mean it, Jonathan! You don’t think I’m an idiot, do you? I know better than to get in a fist fight with a shaved ape like that!”

“I know you’re prideful enough to push him to the edge… and confident enough to think he won’t take the first swing.”

Edward fell silent again. Normally Jonathan was happy with anything that made Edward shut up, but this silence…was unpleasant. Jonathan took Edward’s chin between his fingers and turned his head so they were looking each other in the eye again, their noses bumping up against each other, their breath mingling.

“You worry too much,” he repeated, and this time Edward was the one to kiss _him_.

Edward was busy practically pulling his hair out by the roots, but Jonathan had other plans for what his hands could be doing. He cupped Edward’s jaw, his hands moving down his neck and dragging down his chest until he came to the zipper of his jumpsuit.

The whisper of the zipper sounded impossibly loud in the darkness, competing only with Edward’s stuttering breath as he pulled away from the kiss.

“You sure…?”

The rest of the question, the details, remained unspoken. The little light on the security camera that kept them in its sight at all times blinked as a reminder of its existence.

Jonathan immediately put it out of his mind.

“Of course I’m sure.”

 

* * *

 

_Why was he still watching this?!_

Dwayne felt  _blessed_ that Lisa hadn’t noticed anything strange going on. She was fixed on her own monitor bank, other than getting up once to go get another coffee and take a bathroom break—which made him jump, and had to resist the urge to cover up the screen, which would have been an immediate giveaway.

Riddler and Scarecrow were… definitely making out. If he could get a half-decent picture of this, he might be able to make thousands from selling it to the gossip rags! But that wasn’t what he was thinking about, really—he wasn’t thinking about much at all. Except that repetitive  _why was he still watching_ .

The two of them were carrying on a conversation, but he’d stopped paying attention to it, with the headphones out and the audio muted like the rest of the monitors. He tried to look like he was focusing his attention equally on the other cells. It was funny—he was a career guard, he knew what to look for when it came to people being suspicious and hiding things, but he could feel himself making all of the same mistakes. Probably the only reason Lisa hadn’t noticed was because her own attention was where it should be—on her own centre of monitors.

Scarecrow sat up. He’d obviously unzipped his jumpsuit, and Riddler’s. Scarecrow slipped out of his without a problem, but Riddler struggled with his, probably because he was stuck lying down and with a guy pinning his hips.

Even though they were just down to their regulation white tees—most prisoners didn’t even wear the jumpsuits to bed—it still felt intimate, like seeing a woman in her lingerie.

(Through a window. With a pair of binoculars. From across the street. He felt  _dirty_ .)

Scarecrow was talking again, which surprised him. Riddler was supposed to be the mouthy one. (And then his brain was going in a  _whole_ different direction, and  _no, bad_ , why would he even  _want_ to  imagine something like that?) He was  _still_ talking as he pushed Riddler‘s hair back out of his face, cupped his jaw in his hand, let Riddler put his hands on his hips. It was almost like he was providing a running commentary. It was almost tempting to put the headset back on…

Scarecrow pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it onto his cot across the extremely small cell. He was a scrawny man, and pale enough that even in the darkness and vaguely menacing red lighting, he was practically glowing. Even though Dwayne had seen prisoners completely naked, this… was _different_.

He had only just realized he was probably about to watch two prisoners—two _super villains—_ have sex. And he couldn’t take his eyes off it.


	3. the one where they fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, Dwayne is having a good night. Even if he's having a hard time admitting it to himself. And Jon and Edward are having a VERY good night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the one where they fuck!

Jonathan had never even considered this. It wasn’t like there was anything even _remotely_ arousing about Arkham Asylum; it was cold, it was damp, you were put through Hell every day before you were locked up in a tiny cell to have a fitful night’s sleep, and you were made _constantly_ aware of the fact that you were surrounded by other people and under constant surveillance.

(Although he had been in psychology for long enough to know to know that wasn’t necessarily a turn off for everyone.)

The blinking red continued to blink and be red.

Jonathan was more interested in looking at Edward.

This wasn’t a new sight—just a new locale—but he couldn’t say he’d gotten tired of it.

“Relax, Edward.” He placed his hands on either of Edward’s shoulders and massaged gently. “Just keep breathing steadily... Let your muscles just lose all tension...”

It was almost impossible to get Edward to stop talking for very long—for everyone but Jonathan, of course. He had his methods. Edward was taking deep, slow breaths and had let his eyes slide shut. He would have thought he was about ready to fall asleep—if not for the anticipatory fluttering of his lower abdominal muscles.

Edward... was an excitable man. And obviously Jonathan’s actions had scared him. He had only done what he had done to protect him, had no regrets, and felt no need to apologize... but, against all odds, he still wanted to make him feel better, though he had no obligation to do so.

Damn him for making him develop _feelings_.

Edward was also the sort of man who enjoyed the comfort of physical contact. He would deny it endlessly, and if anyone touched him when he did not want them to Jonathan was sure they would suffer an absurd riddle-based death at the nearest opportunity. But having Jonathan’s hands on him, giving him something that could only be called a massage in the _loosest_ sense, was enough to make him look completely at peace—which was certainly an accomplishment when you were locked up in a place like Arkham.

Jonathan pushed Edward’s shirt up. Edward responded by rolling his hips, gripping Jonathan’s at the same time.

“Jon...” He felt raw pride at the way Edward’s voice came out halfway between a whimper and a moan, even though he had _barely_ touched him. It was just so easy to break him down to his base elements... “Jon, _please_.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely...”

Edward rolled his hips again, grinding against him. Jonathan placed a hand flat on his chest and applied just the slightest amount of pressure. Edward responded by making another pathetic-sounding whine in the back of his throat and lying flat on his back.

Jonathan’s hands went to the waistband of Edward’s boxers. It was too dark to see much of anything, but Jonathan didn’t need to see to feel the heat or the solidity sandwiched between himself and Edward...

“Just relax,” he repeated, easing Edward’s boxers down. “You’re in good hands...”

 

* * *

 

When Dwayne had become a security guard for Arkham Asylum, he had expected to see some weird things. He’d expected attempts on his life, prisoner riots, even plots to take over the world from within the asylum itself. Hell, all of that was part of the _welcoming packet_ you got on your first day.

This... had _definitely_ not been covered in orientation.

(He was thinking it definitely _should_ have.)

Lisa had gone on her lunch break; he could see her through the plexiglass that separated the monitor room from the break room, watching something on her phone and enjoying a saran-wrapped sandwich. Since she obviously didn’t suspect anything, he’d broken his headset out again.

He’d had plenty of opportunities to stop watching. He could have stopped watching when Scarecrow crawled into Riddler’s bed. He could have stopped watching when they started kissing, or when they started stripping. He couldn’t even pretend this was for security reasons anymore. In fact, he was only devoting the smallest amount of attention to the other monitors—just enough to make sure there weren’t any of the little red warning lights going off.

Now, Scarecrow and Riddler were rolling their hips and grinding against each other. Scarecrow pushed up Riddler’s shirt and Riddler whined his name like he was desperate.

“ _Well, since you asked so nicely... Just relax. You’re in good hands.”_

Dwayne practically swallowed his own tongue.

From the way the camera was positioned, Dwayne had a perfect view of the way Riddler’s erection sprung out of his underwear with the most perfect motion he’d ever seen outside of porn. Scarecrow, no shit, _licked his lips_. He felt like someone was playing some kind of elaborate joke on him. There was no way this was real.

Scarecrow went out of his way to avoid touching Riddler; his hands massaged his chest, dragged down his stomach, went to his hips, all studiously avoiding his cock. Riddler made another whining noise; this one Dwayne could hear clearly, and it shot right up his spine like someone had taken a cattle prod to him.

“ _Jon, please. Don’t be an asshole.”_

“ _Mind your manners.”_

“ _Please, Jon. Just_ touch me _already.”_

“ _Ask nicely.”_

“ _I’m already saying please!”_

“ _You’re being a spoiled brat, is what you are.”_

Riddler made a frustrated noise, bucking his hips up, but as soon as Scarecrow put a hand flat on his chest he stopped moving.

“ _Edward_.” It came out sounding like a warning, which Dwayne had no doubt it _was_ , but not... any kind of warning he’d heard before.

Riddler was not the kind of guy who took orders from _anyone_. Dwayne had never even seen him up close and he knew that; despite the fact that he was a scrawny brainiac, he had gotten in almost as many fights and struggles with the guards as someone like the Joker, and the psychologists all pretty much drew lots to decide who would have to deal with him. Not to mention this was a man who regularly terrorized the city of Gotham and _killed people_ in elaborate traps to the point where no one could figure out if he was being inspired by the Saw movies or if _they_ were being inspired by _him_. And here he was, squirming and whining and begging Scarecrow to touch him-- and being controlled by nothing more than a hand without any kind of force behind it, and a stern word.

Riddler was obviously still frustrated. He had thrown his head back, his teeth were gritted (at least from what he could see), and he made a noise that was almost a growl. To his credit, he was still staying completely still, even though Scarecrow was just being _mean_ at this point, deliberately going out of his way to get as close as he could without touching.

“ _What do you say?”_

“ _Please, Jon. Please touch me.”_

“ _That’s better.”_

 

* * *

 

“Please, Jon. Please touch me.”

“That’s better.”

Jon didn’t bother hiding how pleased he was-- though Edward was too distracted to care much anyway. Something else Edward would never admit to, because of his pride, was how much he loved this game they played. He would whine, he would bitch about it, but the way his cock was twitching told him everything he needed to know. He _loved_ squirming and begging under him... and like with everything Edward did, he always put on a show.

Still, part of the game was that when Edward behaved and did as he was told, he was rewarded. There were exceptions, of course—particularly when Jonathan felt Edward _deserved_ a bit of extra punishment, or needed to do something special to get what he wanted. But withholding rewards defeated the entire purpose of the game. Edward wouldn’t want to play anymore if he changed the rules on him.

Besides, the half moan, half sob Edward let out when Jonathan finally wrapped his hand around his cock and gave it a slow, teasing stroke was music to his ears.

“Jon...” The way Edward moaned his name was like something straight out of a porn film. He really was a born performer... even if he tended to overact at times.

Edward’s grip on his hips was tight, almost white-knuckled; he could feel the sting of his worn-down fingernails in his skin. Normally he would have corrected that, but he was feeling generous; he’d already teased him quite enough, and it all came back to those pesky _feelings_ that had him wanting to spoil Edward even though he was being a brat.

(Then again, when was Edward _not_ being a brat? It was a good thirty, maybe even forty percent of his personality.)

Edward was trying so hard to stay still that he nearly bit through his bottom lip, and Jonathan could feel him shaking like all of his muscles were completely tensed up. Jonathan lifted his hand from his chest, and Edward immediately bucked his hips up like he’d just unstrapped him from a gurney, instead of just lightly leaving his hand pressed against his chest.

(It wasn’t that Edward was bad at listening to people. He simply needed the right _motivation_. Otherwise, why would someone like him, who was so very intelligent, deign to listen to anyone else? It took a lot of finesse to get around his pride...)

With one hand free, Jonathan was able to bury his fingers in Edward’s hair. It gave him good leverage to pull him up so they could meet halfway, and he could capture Edward’s mouth in a hot kiss. Edward whined into his mouth, but there was no complaint there—even though Jonathan knew the angle had to be hurting his back.

There was even less complaint when he swiped his thumb across the underside of the head of his cock, and Edward gifted him another porn worthy moan that he _swallowed_.

 

* * *

 

Dwayne knew Scarecrow was aware of the camera. He’d seen him look _right at it_ several times. He’d even seen him look at it since he’d _started watching_. Did that mean he _wanted_ someone to watch? If he knew someone was definitely going to be watching and he did it anyway, did that mean he was okay with it?

Thinking that made Dwayne feel a _little_ less skeevy about his voyeurism. Though he was too far gone to care anyway.

They were kissing now, which was blocking most of his view, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. Riddler was making some really enthusiastic noises and bucking his hips up now that Scarecrow wasn’t keeping him pressed to the bed. Scarecrow had his hand tangled in Riddler’s hair as they made out.

Soon enough—probably because the way Riddler was sitting up looked like _murder_ on his back, what with Scarecrow still straddling his hips and being held up mostly by his hair—they broke apart and Riddler laid back down. His eyes were closed and his mouth was wide open, and he kept making little breathy moans.

(Dwayne was starting to wonder if he could get away with recording the screen. Not—not for personal use, of course. He just knew the tabloids would pay a truly _ridiculous_ amount of money for footage like this.)

(He already felt weird enough just watching, though. So it was really nothing more than a fantasy.)

Scarecrow had stopped touching Riddler again, but he didn’t look like as smug as he did before; his eyes were half-lidded and he was panting, just barely audibly over Riddler’s louder heavy breathing and his little moans. He pulled down the waistband of his underwear and his own erection sprung out. Riddler _whined_.

“ _Jon—”_ Riddler reached out to touch him, but Scarecrow caught him by the wrist and put his hand back on his hip.

“ _Don’t move_ ,” Scarecrow said, and even though it still sounded like an order, there was a... _different_ quality to it this time. Dwayne’s mouth went dry.

Scarecrow had been totally focused on Riddler so far, but now his head was tilted back and his eyes had slid shut, just like Riddler’s had a few moments ago. Riddler, on the other hand, had his head craned up and was staring intently at Scarecrow’s cock, like he just couldn’t look away.

Scarecrow squirmed a bit, adjusting himself so his cock was resting against Riddler’s comfortably, and started slowly bucking and gyrating his hips. His motions were smooth, controlled—but judging by the way he dropped his head forward, hair falling into his face, he was starting to feel anything but.

If before Scarecrow was being mean to Riddler, now it seemed like he was being mean to _himself_. A couple of times, Dwayne swore his hands twitched, like he was just about to reach down and touch himself, only for him to firmly put his hands back on the bed on either side of Riddler and continue to frot against him.

Maybe he was reading too much into a grainy screen that was pretty much entirely red because of the security lights. But he was enjoying the fantasy.

Eventually whatever composure Scarecrow had just broke down entirely. Around the time Riddler moaned his name in the most delightful way, he wagered. The pace of his hips as he grinded against him picked up, and he let out a guttural, almost animal-like sound before obviously deciding it wasn’t good enough and taking both of their cocks in hand, long spindly fingers spreading their pre-come around for lubrication.

“ _Fuck, Jon.”_

“ _Not now, Edward. Maybe later. If you’re good.”_

Dwayne’s brain shut down.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck, Jon.”

“Not now, Edward. Maybe later. If you’re good.”

He chuckled, and was a little proud of the fact that his voice sounded even, if rather raspy. Part of the game was the fact that Jonathan always had his wits about him, was always the collected one. It wasn’t always true—they weren’t always playing the game, sometimes they were just tired and needed each other’s company, sometimes they were just scared and clingy, sometimes they were just bored of it. But Edward had been upset by what happened and needed the comfort of the familiarity. Jonathan was a psychologist—and Edward’s friend and lover. He knew him well enough.

Still, it was testament to how much he cared about the damn fool and their stupid rituals that he was still keeping up the facade, even when he wanted nothing more than to completely lose control. He wasn’t a very sexual person, but Edward... brought out a side of him that was usually content to stay asleep. Edward and his stupid voice, his whining, his pride which he was completely willing to surrender to Jon...

The little composure slip he allowed himself was to bite his lower lip as he jacked them off together. It didn’t help that, even with the constant red glow of the room, he could see that Edward was red from head to toe; his dishevelled appearance, the fact that even though he was trying hard not to move he couldn’t help but squirm, the little noises he was making...

Well. It was a good thing Jon had so much self-control, when he felt like it.

He bucked his hips in time with his hand movements. Edward picked up the rhythm after a moment and followed; Jonathan didn’t even reprimand him for not listening to him. He was far more interested in how close he was. Even though he hadn’t been stimulated as long as Edward, watching him squirm and listening to him beg was more than enough to rile him up...

(Of course, he would never say such a thing out loud. It would only go to Edward’s head.)

“Jon... I’m almost—” Edward cut himself off with a whine as Jonathan ran his thumb over the most sensitive part of the head of his cock.

“Relax,” he breathed, barely able to manage anything above a raspy whisper without his composure falling apart. “Just... hold on...”

He was biting on his lower lip so hard he almost bit through it, working it between his teeth to hide the noises that wanted so badly to escape. He was _so_ close... every muscle in his body was so tense he felt like he was going to pull something. Edward was bucking up against him with small, halted movements, like he was _trying_ not to move but couldn’t help it.

“Ah—!”

Edward suddenly shot up, toes curling, back making a picture-perfect arch as he came. _Hard_. Jonathan knew because of the way his breath caught in his throat, his breathing stuttered violently, his eyelids fluttered involuntarily—

“Oh, god, _Edward_.” It slipped out before he could stop it, but he didn’t care anymore. The show he put on was worth it.

Jonathan didn’t do anything so dramatic as black out, but his vision _did_ go fuzzy at the edges as he came. It took him a moment to recover, at which point he just... _took in_ the sight.

Even in the terrible lighting, Jonathan licked his lips at the sight of both of their come splattered across Edward’s stomach. Edward had his head tilted back, and if it weren’t for the way he was panting like he’d just run a marathon, he would have thought he’d fallen asleep. Considering Arkham’s wake-up call, that wasn’t a terrible idea...

“Get down here,” Edward muttered, almost incomprehensible with how thick and muddled his voice was. Jonathan didn’t realize what he was talking about until Edward grabbed him and pulled him down against him.

“Ugh, at least _clean up_ before you do that,” Jonathan said with a sneer. (He couldn’t really complain _too_ much. He was half responsible for the mess. But he felt he was due _one_ solid complaint.)

“Where? And with what? We’re in prison, Jon. I can’t just like, get up and take a shower.”

Aaaand there was normal Edward, back in record time, even though he still looked exhausted. If Jonathan had more energy, he would have been happy to snark at him. But they were trapped in a room barely bigger than a closet together, and he was exhausted. His bones felt like jelly. He couldn’t even push himself off Edward to go back to his own cot—not that he wanted to, except maybe to make a point about cleanliness.

He shivered. Now that he wasn’t... _exercising_ , and the sweat on his body was starting to cool, he felt chillier than ever. Edward pulled up his jumpsuit over him, then the sheets. The body heat was... inviting. Even if they were sticky and disgusting and they would wake up in a compromising position and being even stickier and more disgusting in the morning...

“Aren’t you glad you climbed into bed with me, Jon?”

“Oh my god, Edward. Go to _sleep_.”

 

* * *

 

Dwayne was speechless.

He leaned back in his chair, away from the screen that he’d been watching so intently, folding his hands together over his mouth. Trying to find the words, even in his own _mind_ , to comprehend what he’d just watched.

Scarecrow and Riddler weren’t exactly the first super villains you thought of when you thought of a sex tape.

(Although that hadn’t really been a sex tape. Which was a shame. No one else was ever going to see what he’d just seen.)

What was he supposed to do with this information? Lisa had already told him that _affectionate behaviours_ between inmates, even incredibly dangerous ones, wasn’t something worth reporting. And there were probably far worse things that went on in Arkham every day than a couple of cell mates having consensual stress-relieving sex. Not to mention bringing it to someone’s attention would mean telling someone he’d just _watched_ all of that, which, if not necessarily a fireable offence (he was just watching the security cams like he’d been told, after all), certainly wouldn’t look _good_.

While he was pondering his next move, a hand landed on his shoulder and nearly made him jump completely out of his seat.

“Lisa! Christ! Nearly gave me a heart attack!” He threw the headset off his head and very nearly threw them at _her_.

“Pretty jumpy, eh?” She laughed and gave him a pat on the shoulder. The same shoulder she was looking over. “Not a great trait for an Arkham security guard, you know.”

“Oh, fuck off.” He laughed like they were just joking around each other, but the nerves made his laugh shaky and fake-sounding. “Not my fault you’re skulking around like a rat.”

“It’s not like I’m _trying_ to be sneaky.” She sat on the edge of the counter, sipping at her coffee, which must have been her fourth of the night or so. “You’ve just been too distracted to care much about what I’ve been doing.”

Dwayne’s blood ran cold.

She couldn’t mean what he thought she meant—could she?

“Heh, yeah. Guess I have been off in my own world.” He laughed and tried to play it off, in case she was making a weird joke and not—what he thought she was saying. Surely she couldn’t be, not when she was talking so cavalierly. He was just being paranoid.

“Yeah, if I swung that way, I’d probably be pretty distracted, too.”

Dwayne spent a few moments casually choking on his tongue. Literally choking on his own saliva. Lisa just sat there and drank her coffee.

“How did you—were you—did you see—” Dwayne had no idea what he was actually trying to say. His mouth was moving faster than his brain. Lisa, if anything, seemed _amused_.

“Relax, newbie,” she said, reaching out to pat his shoulder again. “Don’t burst a blood vessel or have a nervous breakdown or something. I’m not going to rat you out to HR or whatever you’re freaking out about.”

Somehow, Dwayne didn’t find that strictly reassuring.

“Look... this job can take its toll on you. Pretty much every day is spent wondering if today is the day you’re going to get stabbed, or gassed by a killer clown, or something equally awful. Everyone’s got their own ways of dealing with the stress. Watching inmates fuck is probably not the healthiest way, but.” Lisa shrugged. “If they want healthy, they can pay us all better.”

Dwayne felt sick. Lisa’s words were reassuring, but he was still embarrassed and ashamed. No one expected Arkham guards to be good people. He had always wanted to be better than that, just to prove that you could deal with horrible people all day and still _be_ a good person.

“I can hear the gears in your head turning, Dwayne. Don’t worry so much,” Lisa said. “It’s not like you assaulted a prisoner... it’s not even like I caught you jerking off in here or something. Like, this is the same reason everyone watches Big Brother. Just do your job and don’t worry too much about it.”

She went back to her own bank of monitors with her coffee and settled in like nothing had happened. Was it really so simple? Or was it just that nothing in this (literal) madhouse was _ever_ simple, so you just couldn’t sweat the small stuff?

In the periphery of his vision, a small red light started blinking. He half expected it to be on Scarecrow and Riddler’s monitor—like the two of them having sex was just some kind of elaborate distraction from an escape attempt or something.

(Maybe he was just paranoid. But this _was_ Gotham, and it wouldn’t have been the _weirdest_ escape attempt in Arkham’s history. Not even close.)

It wasn’t them, though; they seemed to be asleep, which, yeah. He probably should have expected that. The alarm was going off in a _different_ cell that had been forced to accommodate more than one prisoner. There was shoving, and what looked like shouting, and then one of the inmates lunged at the other and tried to choke his cell mate. (And it was definitely _not_ in the sexy way.)

“ _Shit_.” Dwayne hit the alarm that corresponded to that cell block, to signal to the guards doing their rounds, but he was the first responder.

His own shame would have to wait. He _did_ still have a job to do.


	4. aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small moment after the 'chaos'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this while I was still in school. I'm glad it's finally done. I hope some people enjoy the Strange Accidental Voyeurism Adventures of Scarecrow and Riddler.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Jonathan slept through the night in Arkham Asylum.

It really helped contribute to the mental energy he needed to make their daring escape the next night.

Of course, ‘daring’ was severely pushing it. It wasn’t like they had an elaborate plan. There was no skill involved in taking advantage of the increasingly high number of fights breaking out in the dead of night as violent inmates got tired of sharing their already limited space. There certainly wasn’t any intelligence to speak of in escaping through Croc’s lair, because no guard would dare follow them.

(Jonathan wasn’t fond of the idea himself, but even if he felt ice in the pit of his stomach at the thought—a fear that, for once, didn’t taste sweet—he was still willing to do it if it meant getting out of Arkham.

Plastic sporks wouldn’t be there to save the day forever.)

They were at one of Edward’s hidey-holes before the news was even reporting on their breakout—before Arkham had even noticed they were gone, most likely. (They weren’t good at this.)

Jonathan dropped onto a threadbare couch and ignored the news report playing in the background, which Edward left on so he could hear the _moment_ they started reporting on their escape. Edward dropped onto the couch next to him and promptly kicked his feet up in Jonathan’s lap.

Jonathan looked him dead in the eye as he pushed them off.

“Did you forget all of our _many talks_ about personal space, Edward?”

“Oh, come on.” Edward was grinning at him. “You didn’t have a problem with _personal space_ the other night.

“Oh my god, Edward. You act like it’s the first time we had sex. And you know very well that’s different.”

Edward grinned at him in a completely insufferable way, settling in on his side of the couch. “Come on. We both know you weren’t crawling into my bed just because you were _cold_. Arkham is _always_ cold and you’ve managed so far.”

“I didn’t have any _choice_ but to ‘manage’, and _you_ were the one trying to coax me into your bed because you were feeling _needy_.”

“I’m not _needy_! And that was only after you crawled into my bed like every night!” Edward rolled his eyes. “Maybe I did get used to it, but that’s your fault, not mine. And _you_ were the one who started everything else... Even though there were security cameras everywhere.”

Now it was Jonathan’s turn to roll his eyes. “There’s no such thing as privacy in Arkham, and I’m sure it’s hardly the worst thing the guards have ever seen. Besides, you would broadcast it on live TV if you thought it would earn you a single compliment...”

Edward kicked him in the shin.

Of course, Jonathan hadn’t really thought about the camera at the time—except to glare at it for daring to invade their privacy. But there had been perhaps some small part of him that had been thrilled—not at the idea of being watched on its own, of course, but at the proverbial middle finger it had given to the staff of Arkham. They had put the two of them together, and then when they had discovered they found some measure of comfort in each other’s company, they had torn them apart again... only to drive them even closer, once Jonathan had convinced them why it was a bad idea (twice over) to separate them in the first place.

(Not that their sex had to have a meaning; it certainly hadn’t in the past. But he was a psychologist; he saw such patterns everywhere...)

“ _Breaking news from Arkham Asylum; a riot has broken out among inmates due to cell shortages, resulting in the escape of two notorious criminals in the chaos. We now go live to the scene...”_

Edward had looked like he was about to say something, but immediately cut himself off to watch the news, leaning forward as though the television wasn’t only three feet away. The live correspondent droned on about the riot from behind the safety of the police barricade; he heard vague mention of his name and Edward’s, but he wasn’t really listening. He’d been on the news often enough. He didn’t really care anymore. Edward, on the other hand, was always excited to hear himself mentioned on television—called it getting the recognition he deserved.

“You know this is just going to make Batman come after us sooner, right?” Jonathan droned in response to whatever excited gibberish Edward had babbled at seeing his mugshot on television.

“You’re just jealous,” Edward replied, which made no sense, since they were _both_ the subject of the news report.

Jonathan sighed, wondering how he had ever gotten himself into this situation.

Damn feelings.


End file.
